DFWSEM Members Honored with Five of the Hottest Local Search Articles

2014 a Great Year for Members at Search Engine Land

In addition to running their businesses and being active members of DFWSEM, Greg Gifford and Chris Silver Smith are also contributors at Search Engine Land. In fact, between the two of them, they managed to write five of the top Local Search columns of 2014. Where do they find the time?

For those of you who are not familiar with Search Engine Land, it’s one of the leading online new sources focusing exclusively on the search marketing industry. They are also the driving force behind the SMX conference series.

Greg Gifford

If you experienced negative effects from Google’s Pigeon update, the results do not look good on SEO reports for your clients. Greg’s article offers five local SEO metrics you should focus on instead of rankings.

Having trouble trying to explain the complexities of SEO, algorithms, key word density, and links to your clients? Try using a simple equation that explains why they are not on the first page of Google.

Instead of putting your time and efforts into trying to “fool the nerds at Google”, make your site better. Avoid common pitfalls like not having home page content, pages with only a few sentences of content, spamming your site with keywords, and awful title tags.

Chris Silver Smith

Just like your annual health check up, an annual SEO audit is an important part of website management, especially for local businesses. But where do you start? Chris highlights 12 essential elements you should check during your annual SEO check up. Evaluating redirects, home page title tags, meta descriptions, and optimizing for mobile are all part of the process.

The Yellow Pages are dead, right? Chris Silver Smith explains how the Google Pigeon update has breathed new life into Internet Yellow Pages and online business directories. He also offers tips for optimizing these online directories for your business.

Let’s Continue This Conversation

Did you learn something from these articles that will change your approach in 2015?